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Comment by Mezzie | Hacker News Reader

I generally agree with you, but one thing that's been making me extremely uncomfortable lately (since 2016) is the attacking of alternate platforms/communities that are built. Back in The Day(TM), when people had issues with mod/admin decisions and they couldn't be resolved, they'd just spin off a new commmunity/chatroom/forum/etc. Some people would move, some would stay in both, and we'd wait to see if the disagreeing faction was large enough to sustain itself. If so, you'd just end up with 2/3 places to go to talk about X instead of 1.

Now it's more common to try to get 'bad' platforms dehosted altogether (e.g. Parler/Gab), subreddits try to get their 'alternatives' banned, and any company/group that challenges a big group is going to be bought out or otherwise dealt with. (See: FB's gobbling of companies to try to keep people in their garden instead of letting people chose which gardens they enjoy.)

We used to have the opportunity to walk into the woods and make our own playground. Now people will follow you and attack you for that. THAT'S the problem. Also we're becoming really fond of demanding community loyalty. HN doesn't have this problem (which is one reason I show up), but on other social media sites, it can be, for instance, forbidden to link to/talk about certain other sites. For example, on Reddit, it's common to ban people for posting in the 'wrong' Reddits, and on Twitter finding out somebody participates somewhere 'bad' is practically open season.

I should be able to go on HN and /b/, provided I follow my host's rules. I should also be able to set up my OWN site and explicitly say it's because I disagree with - say - HN's moderation policies without worrying about the site being attacked.

View on HN

I think you need to look at history, "following people into the woods" and much worse than deplatforming has been ongoing for most of the existence of the US (and most/all other countries, just keeping it limited to a US discussion). I mean just look at what happened to people who demonstrated or supported civil rights in the 60s (hint:some were lynched), or gay lesbians in the 80s and 90s (and still). I actually agree that we need to move past these issues, taking a free speech absolutist stance is not the way. This is part of how these groups were and still are discriminated against.

<< taking a free speech absolutist stance is not the way.

I genuinely dislike this label. It is not an absolutist stance at all. If anything, it is simple a stance based on the foundational values of US as a country. And there is a reason for it. If you cannot express your real thoughts, the conversation gets confused with attempts to evade censor or completely incomprehensible since language gets too distorted to mean anything at all.

It is getting tiring. I am saying this as an immigrant from the old country, where censorship was a thing ( with author writing cringy articles in defense of it -- sounds familiar? ). It is sad for me to see US going that route.

> foundational values of US as a country

> old country, where censorship was a thing. It is sad for me to see US going that route.

Why does this keep coming up? Nobody, absolutely nobody, is advocating for government restriction of free speech. That is the foundation of the US as a country.

Twitter didn't exist back then but newspapers certainly did. Town squares certainly did.

If the founding fathers wanted to say "if someone is speaking in a town square you can't throw tomatoes at them or shout them down", they would have.

Twitter moderating its content has zero to do with the foundations of America or censorship in other countries.

Sure. And the moment alternative to Twitter is even suggested, it is curbstomped from hackers, who see it as a 'permissible' target ( and seemingly it is based on the cheering that follows a hack ) and various service providers, who won't let it exist.

It is all fine and dandy to say 'build your own public square', but its point is somewhat lost, when you have a hard time even getting basic materials.

Why is anyone entitled to their own public square.

We Live In A Society. If you come to a public square - physically or on twitter, and scream something that the rest of society doesn't want to hear, you are exercising your free speech, and they are exercising theirs if they say they don't want to hear you.

"Why is anyone entitled to their own public square."

I think there may be a disconnect between what we are trying to convey.

Public square is by definition.. public. It is not a possession of any one person. Anyone can grab a soapbox.

What I see now.. is soapbox oligopoly. That is an issue.

Anyone is free to put up a website as their soapbox.

They don't because they want the tools and reach offered by private platforms, but don't want to follow their rules.

You can't have it both ways.

But companies can? They are Schrodinger's publisher depending on who opens the box.

More to the point, so anyone can have a soapbox, but that soapbox will be kicked from under you in the form of hackers, ddos, and so on unless you use those tools. What is the next advice? Build your own Cloudflare? Your own ISP? It is madness and leaves us exactly where we are now.

You can't tell me everyone can have a soapbox if the soapbox is only theoretical in nature and in production deployment does not survive a day.

Edit: snarky comment removed.

> but that soapbox will be kicked from under you in the form of...

Right. Just like a real-life soapbox.

I don't think you understand what it would mean to go into a public square - at ANY point in history, and start screaming the kinds of things that get you banned by Cloudflare, ISPs, and AWS.

We're not talking about stuff like "I have a different perspective on who should be chief of our tribe". The kind of political rhetoric that will inspire future generations of enlightened intellectuals to say "I disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it".

We're talking about content that has NEVER been acceptable to be preached in a public sphere. The kind of content that societies have always intolerated. Nothing is different. Nothing has changed about that.

<<We're not talking about stuff like "I have a different perspective on who should be chief of our tribe". The kind of political rhetoric that will inspire future generations of enlightened intellectuals to say "I disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it".

I think we fundamentally disagree despite sharing the same initial assumptions.

My argument is effectively that EVERYTHING is a matter of perspective and therefore a matter of opinion and as such protected, because people will disagree about everything, but, if they are indeed enlightened, they will defend it as an opinion. Just by saying that some topics are off-limits, you squarely place yourself as the arbiter of truth, which is a tricky position to be in, because some ideas are just too dangerous to impressionable minds.

Here is the fun part. That is true. Ideas can absolutely wreak havoc, but the appropriate, albeit labor intensive, approach is to help people work through them and not try to suppress it or worse, force it into the shadows.

<< We're talking about content that has NEVER been acceptable to be preached in a public sphere.

I don't want to belabor the point, but there were tons of things that were not acceptable and now are acceptable precisely because some decided to challenge status quo of what is 'never acceptable'. If examples are needed, note how quickly question of homosexuality moved from barely whispered to openly celebrated in US society.

Censorship is an indelible part of human relations. You can never truly speak your mind, partly because the other person cant have it, but fundamentally because you cant either.

"You can never truly speak your mind"

And that is a problem. Our communication depends on being able to articulate ourselves. Quality of our thoughts depend on the language. The quality of our discourse suffers, because our thoughts are being trained to offer 'safe' language.

If you do not see it as a problem, we have a problem.

This is a fact of being human, and you will never “fix” it.

I disagree. And I disagree for one reason only. Never is an awful long time to state anything with any kind of certainty.

You will never fix it the same way you will never make a diamond out of ruby. It's constitutive of being human.

I think we've arrived at the point where all the town squares are owned by a private corporation who can - so I am told - do whatever they want on their property. I guess this was always the terminal destination of American society: stuck in a company town with nowhere to go, while the government just looks on saying "they're not doing anything illegal, so I can't help!"

This is effectively where we are. History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. I am personally saddened that it is not seen as a danger that it is.

But the founding principles have always had restrictions build in. Try for example publically calling for the assassination of the president (or any other person) and see how you fare. Or army members not being allowed to talk about their missions. I don't buy that these are fundamentally different, it is simply drawing the line differently of what is permissable free speech.

The comparison is not applicable. When you join the army, you give up certain rights to join that specific group. To make it even more important, the rules are clear and explicit.

Now compare it to Twitter or Facebook. You don't know what you signing up for. Their TOS effectively say they can ban you for things they deem wrong. It is only recently that we know how they evaluate it ( see CNN discussion of FB speech violence tiers ).

Free speech is just that. It is free speech. There is no TOS. It includes all sorts of nasty bits too, because that is what being human is. Trying to pretend otherwise is, at best, counterproductive.

But here we are. Entire nation scared of reality and in dire need to cover it up with soft language.

<< But the founding principles have always had restrictions build in.

Do they? I am reading the constitution and I don't see those restrictions. You may get a visit from some agencies, but that is to make sure you were not joking.

On the other hand, I do see a mention of when slavery is ok in US and yet people seem surprised when it is pointed out.

I am talking about restrictions to free speech and yes when you join the army your free speech is restricted. Which is a clear example of the government restricting free speech, but presumably that is OK?

The argument is a good one, but I think it is missing the nuance of the status of a soldier, who, for a variety of reasons, is not an average citizen ( note, how many restrictions are listed with qualifier 'while in uniform'[1]).

You can say what you want. Just don't make it look like the army is saying this.

It may sound like a contradiction, but it is not. You voluntarily join the army. You join that specific group and accept their 'rules'. It is harder to argue ( not impossible since there are naturalized citizens, who clearly opt in to become citizens ) that citizens by right of birth voluntarily opt into that set of rules. That is the where constitution comes in.

What I am saying is that army argument is flawed.

edit: changed typical to average

[1]https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/...

But restrictions like this don't just apply to soldiers, journalists can be prosecuted for revealing classified information, people can be prosecuted for treason because they revealed specific information to foreign agents, people can be sued for defamation. All these are restrictions to free speech.

My argument is every one believes there are limits to free speech they just place the boundaries at different places. And I stand by my position that the soldier example is on a fundamental level a restriction on free speech.

Ironically, I'm a butch lesbian who came out in the 90s, so I'm well aware.

One of my less popular opinions in the queer community is that I AM a free speech absolutist (or close to it), even if it does result in some discrimination. (Even against me.) Of course we should minimize and work to eliminate discrimination in society, but that isn't the only value we have, and unfortunately social policies are always a case of trade-offs.

I also prefer to let the homophobes be open about it so a.) I know what they're saying and can undermine it and b.) so I know who to avoid. All pushing it underground does is make me nervous that everybody's a closet homophobe and means I can't change anybody's mind. (Which I have done on multiple occasions).

> so I know who to avoid

This is a good point! I think that the concept of "who do I want to associate with" is a different way to view things than "everyone I see in the world needs to treat me with agency"

I have a hard time knowing where that line is. Like you said,

> I AM a free speech absolutist (or close to it), even if it does result in some discrimination. (Even against me.)

People out there, due to their agency, may not agree with where my agency ends and theirs begins. I think if we have the privilege and feel able to "choose to avoid" those that we disagree with, we could have these discussions in the open without fear and actively change people's minds.

I don't know how to though. I've written about it here [1] but I still don't have a good answer for how do we draw that line of where your agency ends and mine/theirs begin.

[1] https://timonapath.com/articles/body-politic

I think it's such a hard question because the line moves in accordance to people's position in their culture and society. Even oppressed/marginalized people can have very different circumstances. For example, the 80s-00s were very homophobic, particularly in certain areas of the country, but one thing I had in my favor was a parent with their own household that supported me. That meant that if, say, my dad pushed the issue and was an ass, I just stopped visiting. And likewise, once he'd come around (took 3-4 years), if his family had been an ass to me, they would have lost us all because my immediate family was behind me.

I also tested well enough (I was the top scorer in the county on all of our standardized tests) that it was worth shutting up about my being a big fat homo.

That's a very different situation from a gay kid in an Evangelical home in rural Alabama in the 90s, or (moving outside of sexuality) an African American family in the US South in the 50s.

Agency is very tied into a person's individual circumstances, and trying to legislate rules and policy around that is a nightmare, particularly given it can change on a dime. (My MS diagnosis knocked out a fair chunk of my agency).

I think most people's instinct is to try to protect the most vulnerable, but that may end up stifling conversation to the point where the group dissolves/can't hold itself together OR opening people to being poached away to other groups OR other groups with different norms outcompeting or attacking that group.

We need to be careful not to monkey's paw ourselves.

That's really about monopolies on information and other gateways more than anything. We are so used to consolidation to one or few large platforms for us to access information or services. This is in large part due to network effects, but also due to poor regulation as well as us being lazy.

So if we have lot of different options to access information and your views are still unwelcome in all but the most extreme places, then I think it reflects quite poorly on your views. You might not get a platform, but that doesn't mean you're being persecuted.

It is, but I would argue that was one of the reasons for the establishment of free speech. Back when we were conceiving of free speech as a right, it was in direct response to a monopoly on information. In that case, it was the government backing up their monopoly on information with their monopoly on force. Now, it's companies backing up their oligarchy on information with their resources.

I think the problem is the monopoly on information, not its source. I understand some people disagree.

> So if we have lot of different options to access information and your views are still unwelcome in all but the most extreme places, then I think it reflects quite poorly on your views. You might not get a platform, but that doesn't mean you're being persecuted.

I agree with this. It's just important to still let those extreme places exist.

From my understanding of history which is probably incomplete, free speech is freedom from government restriction and prosecution, not about availability of information in the private sector. It boils down to the principle that we can't force other people to repeat your views.

Free speech as a concept has definitely been abused by people distributing mis-information. That's more of a modern problem as network effects and technology made mass distribution and co-ordination of mis-information affordable outside of governmental organisations.

In terms of "extreme places", the Internet is pretty free from restrictions already. You can pretty much set up a website with content that's not acceptable on any of the large media platforms.

Yes, that is how and why free speech was established. My argument is that we actually were reacting to the availability of information, but since the government (and outside of the US in some places the Church for whatever religion the state follows) was the only source of the monopoly, we assumed the problem was government. Like if you have somebody running around committing arson and you exile them but don't bother criminalizing arson; you addressed that particular actor but not the underlying problem.

> Free speech as a concept has definitely been abused by people distributing mis-information. That's more of a modern problem as network effects and technology made mass distribution and co-ordination of mis-information affordable outside of governmental organisations.

This is true, however, I would say it needs to be balanced against the situation before, where institutions acted unchecked and it was often impossible to act at all outside of them. I am sympathetic to the argument that misinformation is a problem and I even agree with it, I just think the ways we discuss solving the problem would be worse. It's not enough to solve a problem: We should try to solve it in a productive way. Otherwise we end up with a Pyrrhic victory.

> In terms of "extreme places", the Internet is pretty free from restrictions already. You can pretty much set up a website with content that's not acceptable on any of the large media platforms.

This is why I focused on things like pressure to buy out, DDOSes, immense legal resources being brought to bear, etc. You can set up a website, but if it becomes big enough, people start going after it with things other than just speech, and THAT'S where I draw the line.

> So if we have lot of different options to access information and your views are still unwelcome in all but the most extreme places, then I think it reflects quite poorly on your views.

And then those "most extreme places" (Parler, Truth Social) invariably fail because of the "worst people problem".

https://twitter.com/hankgreen/status/1348101443404787718

Historically, this perspective has proven to be laughable. Criticism of Putin can hardly be found except for the most extreme places (in some locations)

>Criticism of Putin can hardly be found except for the most extreme places (in some locations)

That's driven by government persecution, so not really what we're talking about.

Meh- power is power. Fine, how about extreme positions like Jesus is god, earth is round, earth is not center of universe, slavery should be outlawed, women should not have to wear hijab, ...

Those were all sanctioned by government, who decides what the law is and who breaks it. We're not talking about that.

>subreddits try to get their 'alternatives' banned

Every once in a while I come across a rumor that AHS and affiliated subreddits employ a strategy of posting illegal content (like child pornography) on subreddits/platforms that they want shut down for wrongthink. At some point it doesn't matter that the government allows for free speech if a small minority is able to control the flow of ideas for the rest of society; the effect is the same and technically an authoritarian government could trivially benefit from such censorship while ostensibly remaining neutral.

And, for the record, /b/ was the birthplace of hundreds of internet-wide memes in its heyday, with next to zero moderation. The fact that the average person can't stand an unmoderated forum doesn't mean that such fora have no place - especially considering the likelihood that there are campaigns (by the same type of people who try to get alternatives dehosted) to keep such places unusable by deliberately posting offensive and off topic content.

Well, that's where the whole business of Internet anonymity comes into play. What if people had to post their state-supplied identifying information at all times, so there was no doubt about who they were? This is more or less how traditional journalism works: the reporter doesn't generally get to hide behind a screen of anonymity. Editorial board op-eds are often unsigned, however.

I think anonymity is OK personally, it falls into the tradition of anti-government pamphleteering in pre-Revolution colonial North America under British Royal rule, and samizdat literature in the USSR.

No, the journalist will just report from an "anonymous source" instead.

I really want to believe in free speech absolutism, but have been really concerned how successful the "flooding the zone with shit" strategy in propaganda has been. This seems to have destabilized many western countries to varying degrees. The best solution I've heard for this is that we need better algorithms for what gets amplified by platforms and what doesn't. Similar to how thirty years ago I could have shouted all day about the moon landing being fake and it would have never made it into the evening news unless there was something more to it.

What's your thoughts on how we can defend against the shit flooding? I find yhis entire problem area really hard.

The flipside is that the old ways enabled institutions to lie to the people more easily. Remember Iraq? I just bring this up to keep us from getting rose-tinted nostalgia glasses about how much better things were before.

Another caveat to what I'm about to say is that I think we're in for a century of legal and political upheaval, so long term solutions will need to fit into whatever we build next.

That said, I think that there some things we could do.

I'd like to see/hear more about looking into the possibility of regulating sentiment, for example. Maybe you can write any POSITION you want on culture war issue X, but you can't write it in such a way it's only meant to inflame anger/cause despair/etc. Or perhaps you can, but you have to have some kind of warning label, or that content is allowed but turned off/blurred by default (like NSFW pics on Reddit), so you have to actively go out of your way to consume things that are 'bad' for you.

Also give people more tools and nudges. Like let people click through a Twitter profile and see that 80% of a person's Tweets are angry or about political topics. Somebody brought up tax policy as an example of something that doesn't get this treatment, and that's because tax policy is BORING and Slate/Newsmax aren't writing hit pieces about tax policy. People care about culture topics because the media whips them into a frenzy.

We could also force the companies to do due diligence in their R+D/feature implementations; maybe Twitter should be forced to prove that each new algorithm change makes people HAPPIER (or at least doesn't have terrible mental health effects).

Also I advocate for digital history and basic internet infrastructure information to be taught at the K-12 level; so much of the problem is that people don't understand how any of this works at a VERY BASIC level.

Thank you for your thoughtful response!

Dehosting is a problem of capitalism which is why the erosion of the progressive era regulations and the attempts to prevent their reinforcement and update are things that need to be settled now. Today, we live in the second Gilded Age where maybe a dozen people can affect policies that impact millions of people. You want freedom then you have to put limits on what the rich can do or make it unlawful to be that rich (divestment and breakup).

No, dehosting is a problem common across all socio-economic systems. It is even more prevalent in non-capitalist systems.

Much of the driving force behind today's dehosting is a result of increasing government intrusion into how information is shared on the internet. Congress has been openly threatening tech companies about "misinformation" for the past decade or so and this is a very predictable result.

I agree. It's a 'power' problem.

One historical example that comes to mind that has nothing to do with capitalism is the uproar around the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages because it broke the Church's moral information monopoly.

I think you'd find dehosting was more prevalent in the USSR and the eastern block than the west even now.

I protested a war in front of the White House. Can’t do that in Russia right now. I am far more worried about the effects of misinformation than I am about people getting booted off Twitter.

That's whataboutism. Should there be any concentration of productive forces such that a few people can command or influence others policies to adversely (or even positively) affect millions of people simply because they own stock in said companies?

Dehosting is insane when you consider that your domain registrar and DNS providers can deplatform you as well.

"Bad" platforms aren't bad because "we disagree with them."

They're bad because they're lying to people en masse and inciting rebellion.

And yes, I absolutely think that behavior that reaches that bar should be squelched. The dangers of enabling the spread of misinformation are entirely too visible in today's society.

The slippery slope argument is garbage in this case. No one has been banning political speech from major platforms. Heck, they bent over backwards to allow Trump and company to say the most outrageous things for years before finally stepping in and putting a stop to it.

And Parler being deplatformed for enabling the public organization of rebellion against the United States hardly seems like an "oh no, we're becoming Nazis!" moment.

It's only the most extreme views that result in deplatforming; "your view on taxes is different than mine" will never rise to that level, so there's no slippery slope.

So in what case can we justify enabling platforms to lie to people and incite violence? It simply can't be done.

Is the first or the second the issue?

If it's the first, I can find a TON of lying and misinformation on 'mainstream' sites and institutions. Off the top of my head, I can think of examples in the past year where the NYT and ACLU lied or misrepresented information, for example. There's also a shit ton of information flying around respectable Dem Twitter and Reddit whenever news events happen. Remember how many people thought that the people Kyle Rittenhouse shot were black and tried to stoke racial tensions using that talking point?

So obviously it's not the lying.

So let's talk about 'inciting rebellion.'

Everybody involved in the January 6th riot is a braindead moron. Trump is a braindead moron. And, frankly, if Trump were arrested, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. That doesn't mean we crack down on speech. It'd be like ordering the USPS to open letters and report people if they plotted their stupid Dollar Store peasant rebellion using paper letters, or tapping everybody's phones.

I'm also exceptionally uncomfortable with the idea that inciting rebellion is inherently bad, as somebody who does believe we should resist tyranny and people have the right to rebel.

They should have been able to talk about how much the government sucks all they want, they crossed the line when they showed up to break into Congress.

> It's only the most extreme views that result in deplatforming; "your view on taxes is different than mine" will never rise to that level, so there's no slippery slope.

Taxes, probably not, but it'll be really interesting to see how union discussions, for example, are handled. Also I could definitely come up with some tax policies that would get me deplatformed from the big spaces. We just haven't dragged taxes into the culture war yet.

When the NYT says something that is factually incorrect, they issue a retraction. Everything they do say is fact-checked, even if they make mistakes.

That's not even close to "lying".

"Misrepresentation" can be a grey area that blends into framing and emphasizing certain parts over others. I didn't include misrepresentation on my list, and that was intentional. You can disagree with how an event is reported without the report containing any actual lies--and that falls under "a matter of opinion."

Things bouncing around "Dem Twitter," whatever that means, are hardly the fault of the NYT or ACLU. Whatever was said, it didn't enter my bubble, in that I never saw a claim that Rittenhouse shot any black people.

But I don't find Twitter useful, so I don't follow anything on it. Instead I read the NYT, and while I don't always agree with their editorials, I generally feel the information they publish as news is as accurate as they can figure out how to make it.

> It'd be like ordering the USPS to open letters and report people if they plotted their stupid Dollar Store peasant rebellion using paper letters, or tapping everybody's phones.

No, it really, really isn't like that.

It's more like shutting down stations from using the licensed public airwaves to disseminate incitement to violence or to broadcast blatant lies--and then later argue in court that "no reasonable person" should have believed those lies. I'm sure you know the latter actually happened, and the former was the law of the land until Reagan managed to tear down the Fairness Doctrine. [1] Which was found to be compatible with the First Amendment, and the only reason we don't have law to replace the original FCC rule is that Reagan vetoed it.

Regardless, my point is that there is potentially a way to limit speech that doesn't prevent people from complaining about the government but that also prohibits people from outright lying about the government (or other facts).

[1] https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-...

> Now it's more common to try to get 'bad' platforms dehosted altogether (e.g. Parler/Gab)

Well, no company can be forced to host antisemitism, holocaust denial and similar content [1] - most companies don't even want to host such content, simply because of how despised (or, in the case of Europe, illegal) it is.

[1] https://fortune.com/2020/11/13/parler-extremism-hate-conspir...

I am also an American who disagrees with those European laws, though I understand them and why they came to pass. It's one of the difficulties of the issue: Free speech used to be more of a national problem, now it's larger, and, as you mentioned, international law and culture add even more variables to consider.

I understand the desire to abide by European standards, because the Holocaust in particular was so horrific, but there are countries that have laws against things like promoting homosexuality, so clearly legality can't be the only moral arbiter here because the laws are a.) contradictory and b.) we recognize authoritarian governments make oppressive laws and we shouldn't comply with them. Which means we need another standard, one that defines Holocaust denial as impermissible but discussions of being gay as fine.

I don't think anybody should HAVE to host holocaust denial, but if somebody does, they shouldn't be attacked for it. (And 'attacked' meaning attempts made to take down the content/sue facetiously/DDOSing, etc. Nothing stopping people from mocking the host or pulling their money).

I'm also wary of things like 'hosting anti-semitism' as a justification, because what is considered anti-semitic varies (like most kinds of bigotry). Is it anti-semitic to criticize the government of Israel? What about the gender issues in Ultra-Orthodox communities? (I'm not Jewish, but I feel the same way about groups that I am a part of: I might not LIKE being called a dyke, seeing somebody say all homosexuals are depraved degenerates, etc. but that's not the same as calling for my murder or trying to get me fired.)

> Which means we need another standard, one that defines Holocaust denial as impermissible but discussions of being gay as fine.

We actually have, and that is the Declaration of Human Rights.

Holocaust denial denies the very thing why this Declaration was formulated and accepted by all civilized nations. Discriminating against gay people violates Articles 1-3 of the Declaration.

The problem is that the US, its constitution being way older than the Declaration, has a far wider understanding of "free speech" and the responsibilities associated with it.

I mean, if we got every internet company to agree and had some kind of public standards and the ability to vote or otherwise talk through borderline issues, I'd be fine with that as a solution, even as somebody who does hold the US view of free speech.

The problem is that there's no way companies are going to leave money on the table or authoritarian governments are going to agree to that, so then you're right back to the two different set of standards where companies proclaim in the EU/US/etc. that they follow content moderation according to the DHR while letting some countries erase gay people and women, and if that happens, their claim to any kind of moral stand or objectivity can't be taken seriously.

Frankly, I think this issue is going to require some VERY large changes to our systems to deal with, but first we have to go through the panic period where the people in power realized they fucked up and try to save the system that serves them well. I'm of the opinion our information expansion over the last 15 or so years is as monumental as the invention of writing or possibly even just the printing press. Social upheaval is going to follow, and until we establish new systems, it's hard to know how to use those systems to combat this problem.

For example, I think the Constitution is outdated and we should rewrite it.

>most companies don't even want to host such content, simply because of how despised ... it is

I don't think that's true because the frequency of bad ideas is evenly distributed. I'm sure there are many company owners that have those bad ideas and want to host them.

These ideas get suppressed because of societal norms. The problem here is when you disagree with the norm. I'm personally fine with making holocaust denial illegal, but it would be dishonest of me to claim that wasn't an authoritarian move, and that violates another, arguably more important norm! So we split the difference, and leave it up to individual choice. But that solution fractured when the internet split our norms into a thousand pieces, and has totally failed with the mainstream adoption of Trump and woke/cancel culture norms (both of which violate other, more important norms).

Frankly its terrible to feel like you're 'losing' people to bad ideas, and allowing communities to form around bad ideas accelerates the loss. We intuitively understand that some bad ideas are bad enough to lead to war, and vast human suffering. And so we come back to a justification for limited authoritarianism, because war is even worse than that.

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